Biblical Theology

While reading Joshua Torrey’s A Lying Spirit over the weekend, I began to ponder again Gregory of Nyssa’s view of the Incarnation and Atonement. The fit is quite natural, both considering “holy deception” (as T...

The cross stands at the center of every covenant (including the covenant of revelation) because it, more than anything else, shows us the Lord. We see His patience in submitting to death, His mercy and toleranc...

Introduction
By the time of Jeremiah Israel’s rebellion had become so odious that for God to tolerate it further would mean He was not merely patient with sinners, but sympathetic to treason. The nation wa...

While it’s true Moses delivered a law which teaches men how deep their sin runs, such forth-telling is really not the central idea of Sinai. Yes, the law makes sinners admit their guilt, but it’s not for the sa...

The law was offered to fallen man in order that, lacking all faculty of fulfilling the law, he may fulfill it through Christ.
Therefore, the promulgation of the law to Israel on Mount Sinai was a very graci...

The law delivered to Moses contains instructions for the priests, and instructions for the people; laws which govern how men are to approach God, and laws which govern how they are to conduct themselves. This i...

After making a covenant with him, God put Abraham into a deep sleep in order to speak to him from within a nightmare, “Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them… but in the...

He who is the foundation of the covenant of grace, held also the highest rank in the giving of the law. (Calvin on Galatians 3:19)
As we continue our study of how Christ was administered to the Saints in the O...

Fourteen generations after revealing to Abraham the Son of Man would rule the world, God clarified He would not merely be the patriarch of a large tent dwelling family, but the king over a large and prosperous ...

Recommended Reading: Reformed Seminarian

Affirming the Reformed Distinctive Having outlined the several aspects pertaining to the nature of Christ’s atonement (found here and here) we come now to address the heart of the Reformed distinctive, or that which separates our view from all other schools of thought. To state it concisely, the biblical and Reformed doctrine is that God had […]

The Applicability of the Atonement In our previous post (found here) we saw that the design of the atonement should always be distinguished from the question of its inherent value. Following the Hodges, moreover, we find that the same thing is true concerning its applicability. But what exactly does the term “applicability” mean, and more […]

Isolating the Question For the most part it has been customary for Reformed theologians to isolate the design of the atonement from all other related considerations, including its nature. This can be seen in the way Charles Hodge introduces the question in his Systematic Theology. Speaking of its design he writes, “The question therefore, does […]